


freefall awaits the brave

by giantminiaturespacepiglet



Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Gen, None whatsoever, Spiritual Visions, eothas on the way to steal your girl, no chill, pre-Pillars of Eternity, yeah that's gaun's pledge at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-10 10:18:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14735100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giantminiaturespacepiglet/pseuds/giantminiaturespacepiglet
Summary: Always before it has been the void, the steady march of decay to peace unending, the distant sight of a massive aurochs in his unyielding tread through Eora.  But this….he is nowhere.  She is alone on the ice, beneath a too bright sky, and as she walks she feels no chill.





	freefall awaits the brave

The sleep before the missionary comes, she dreams of the ice.

The vast expanse of The White stretches out before her under a shrouded gray sky, a sky too bright, for in this land winter brings night without end and a cold that cracks bone. Light does not come here, at the bottom of the world, when the Beast of Winter roams the ice. She steps forward and realizes there is nothing between her skin and the cold, her feet and body bared to the elements like after her first drowning. But unlike then, she does not feel the bite of it, the life clawing inside her for warmth and air, she feels nothing. 

She walks.

It’s strange there is no wind, no blizzard shredding across the expanse. The air is dreadfully still and silence hangs heavy. She has never seen this before, though visions have pervaded her sleeping hours since before she could speak. Always before it has been the void, the steady march of decay to peace unending, the distant sight of a massive aurochs in his unyielding tread through Eora. But this….he is nowhere. She is alone on the ice, beneath a too bright sky, and as she walks she feels no chill. 

She isn’t sure when it happens, but she finds herself on the edge, overlooking the ocean. She has stood here often, fallen into the depths in search of answers, a chink of light in the darkness through which to peer into the In Between, but also….

It is here summer finds The White each year. Here she has stood many times with her clan and they have gazed ever, ever east to stand witness, to watch the wheel turn once more, but it is not now, it is far too soon…

A light winks into her vision and she looks upwards, uncertain.

Stars.

Three aligned, flickering in the gray. 

It seems that they watch her.

She lifts her hands, reaching up, letting the light of them spill over her skin, a faint and pale thing, dead and distant.

The priests say the stars are ghosts, that they have already gone to the void and left only their light behind, but that someday that too will fade until there is nothing left of them. So it is with all things. Why then do these seem to see her? Why does she feel their light like a breath upon her being?

_Do you see?_

A whisper at the edge hearing.

_See what?_ She cannot tell if she spoke the words or if they have simply made themselves heard.

_It’s time._

_I…I’m not ready._ Whose words? They aren’t hers and yet they are, her soul speaks them without leave, they surface without possibility of silence.

_You are. You must be._

She closes her eyes against the light. There is a pull within her, something that calls a name she does not comprehend but knows better than her own.

_Let it in._

The blast of light sets her every sense aflame, eyes flying open to see the dawn break over the horizon, brighter than any natural sunrise, blinding and all consuming and yet her eyes do not sear, her skin does not burn. Warmth floods her and with it the sense of a promise given. Hope alights within her like fire, not the ravaging heat of Magran’s inferno, but the small, persistent light of a candle guttering on an alter, of a brush fire sweeping over dead fields, soot and ash, blackened death a cradle for green, green life renewed. Creation from destruction, from rot, new growth.

In the back of her mind she hears it, a long, echoing call of condemnation, the bugle of an ancient beast over a vast space. It should cause her soul to quake, she thinks, should wrack her spirit with fear or shame and yet it is a distant thing. She does not care to hear it.

_Let go, little one. We will find you again._

_When?_

Silence.

The light. 

Again, she walks, forward, into it, she should fall into the waves, but she does not, there is light under her feet, a tether between her and the dawn. She is drawn forward and she goes gladly to a white that is not ice and decay, but sun and stars and life.

She awakens to darkness and the hum of the chanters.

The missionary comes some hours before they sleep once more. 

On his hand he wears a ring of interlocking sickles.

**Author's Note:**

> idk establishing character stuff i guess


End file.
